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HON. C. L VALLANDIGHAM, 



OP OHIO. 



Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 20, 1861. 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY HENRY POL & IN H ORN r 

1861. 

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$hc (Swat amwtam Revolution of 1861. 



The special ordor— namely, llie report ol the coiiiiiijlii-e .m tliiny-threc — being under ccmoiilerui;. 

Mr. VALLANDIGHAM addressed the House as follows: 

Mr. Speaker.: It was my purpose, some three mouths ago. to speak solely upoa 
the question of peace and \v,ir between the two great sections of the Union, and to 
defend at length the position which, in the very beginning ol' this crisis, and almost 
alone, I assumed against the employment of military force by the Federal Govern- 
ment to execute its laws and restore its authority within the States which might se- 

!e. Subsequent events have rendered this unnecessary. Within the three months 
or more, since the presidential election, so rapid has been the progress of events, and 
'such the magnitude which the movement in the South lias attained, that the country 
has been forced — as this House and the incoming Administration will at last be forced 
in spite of their warlike purposes how. — to regard it as no longer a mere casual and' 
temporary rebellion of discontented individual . but a great and terrible involution 
which threatens now to result in permanent dissolution of the Union, and division 
into two or more rival, if not hostile, confederacies. Before this dread reality the 
atrocious and fruitless policy of a war of coercion to preserve or to restore the Union 
lias, out-ide, at least, of then' Walls and of tin- capital, rapidly dissolved* The peo- 
ple have taken the subject up, and have reflected upon it, till to-day, in the South 
almost as one man, and by a very large majority, as I believe, in the .North, and es- 
pecially in the West, they are resolved that, whatever else of calamity may befall us 
that horrible scourge of civil. WAR shall be averted. Sir, I rejoice that the hard 
Anglo-Saxon sense and pious and humane impulses of the American people have 
rejected the specious disguise of words without wisdom which appealed to them to 
enforce the laws, collect the revenue, maintain the Union, and restore the Federal 
authority by the perilous edge of battle, and that thus early in the revolution they 
are resolved to compel us, their Representatives, belligerent as you of the Republican 
party here may now be, to the choice of peaceable disunion upon the one hand or 
Union through adjustment and conciliation upon the other. Born, sir, upon the soil 
of the United States; attached to my country from earliest boyhood; bring and 
revering her, with some part, at least, of the spirit of Greek and Roman patriotism ; 
between these two alternatives, with all my mind, with all my heart, with all my 
strength of body and of soul, living or dj ingj at home or in exile, I am for the Union 
which made it what it is; and therefore I am also for such terms of peace and ad- 
justment as will maintain that Union now and forever. This, then, is the question 
which to-day 1 propose to discuss: — 

How shall the Union ok tiiesr States BE RESTORED AM) PRESERVED :' 

Sir, it is with b.coming modesty and with something of awe, that I approach the 
discussion of a question which the ablest statesmen of the country have failed to solve. 
Hut the country expects even the humblest of her children to serve her in this the 
hour of her sore trial. This is my apology. 

Devoted as 1 am to the Union, I have yet no eulogies to pronounce upon it to-day. 
It needs none. Us highest eulogy is the history of this country for the last seventy 
years. The triumphs of war and the arts of peace,— science; civilization; wealth- 
population; commerce; trade.; manufactures; literature; education; justice • tran- 
quility ; security t) life, to person, to property ; material happiness ; common defease • 
national renown ; all that is implied in the "blessings of liberty ;" these, and more' 
have been its fruits from the beginning to this hour. These have enshrined it in the 



hearts of the people ; and, before God, I believe they will restore and preserve it. And 

to-day they demand of us, their embassadors and representatives, to tell them how this 
great work is to be accomplished. 

Sir, it has well been s.ud that it is not to be done by eulogies. Eulogy is for times of peace. 
Neither is it to be done by lamentations o» r er its decline and fall. These are for the 
poet and the historian, or for the exiled statesman who may chance to sit amid the 
ruins of desolated cities. Oars is a practical work; and it is the business of the wise 
and practical statesman to inquire first what the causes are of the evils for which he is 
required to devise a remedy. 

Sir, the subjects of mere partisan controversy which have been chiefly discussed here and 
in the country, so far, are not the causes, but only the symptoms or developments of tho 
malady which is to be healed. These causes are to be found in the nature of man .and in tho 
peculiar nature of our system of governments. Thirst for power and place, or preeminence 
— in a word, ambition — is one of the strongest and earliest developed passions of man. It 
is as discernible in the school-boy as in the statesman. It belongs alike to the individual 
and to masses of men, and is exhibited in every gradation of socitty, from the family 
up to the highest development of the State. In all voluntary associations of any kind, 
and in every ecclesiastical organization, also, it is equally manifested. It is the sinby 
which the angels fell. No form of government is exempt from it ; for even the abso- 
lute monarch is obliged to execute his power through the instrumentality of agents; 
arid ambition here courts one master instead of many masters. As between foreign 
States, it manifests itself in schemes of conquest and territorial aggrandizement. In 
despotisms, it is shown in intrigues, assassinations, and revolts. In constitutional 
monarchies and in aristocracies, it exhibits itself in contests among the different 
orders of society and the several interests of agriculture, trade, commerce, and the 
professions. In democracies, it is seen everywhere, and in its highest development; 
lor here all the avenues to political place and preferment, and emolument, too, are open 
to every citizen ; and all movements and all interests of society, and every great ques- 
tion — moral, social, religious, scientific — no matter what, assumes, at some time or 
other, a political complexion, and forms a part of the election issues and legislation of 
the day. Here, when combined with interest, and where the action of the Government 
may be made a source of wealth, then honor, virtue, patriotism, religion, all perish 
be'bre it. No restraints and no compacts can bind it. 

In a Federal Republic all these evils are found in their amplest proportions, and 
take the form also of rivalries between the States ; or more commonly or finally at 
least, especially where geographical and climatic divisions exist, or where several 
contiguous States are in the same interest, and sometimes where they are similar in 
institutions or modes of thought, or in habits and customs, of sectional jealousies 
and controversies which end always, sooner or later, in either a dissolution of the 
union between them, or the destruction of the federal character of the government. 
But however exhibited, whether in federative or in consolidated governments, or what- 
ever the development may be, the great primary cause is always the same — the feeling 
that might makes right; that the strong ought to govern the weak; that the will of the 
mere and absolute majority of numbers ought always to control ; that fifty men may 
do what they please with forty-nine; and that minorities have no rights, or at least 
that they shall have no means of enforcing their rights, and no remedy for the viola- 
tion of them. And thus it is that the strong man oppresses the weak, and strong 
communities, states and sections, aggress upon the rights of weaker states, commu- 
nities and sections. This is the principle; but I propose to speak of it to-day only 
in its development in the political, and not the personal or domestic relations. 

Sir, it is to repress this principle that Governments, with their complex machin- 
ery, are instituted among men ; though in their abuse, indeed, Governments may 
themselves become the worst engines of oppression. For this purpose treaties are 
entered into, and the law of nations acknowledged between foreign States. Con- 
stitutions and municipal laws and compacts are ordained, or enacted, or concluded, 
to secure the same great end. No men understood this, the philosophy and aim of 
all just government, better than the framers of our Federal Constitu'ion. No men 
tried more faithfully to secure the Government which they were instituting, from 
this mischief; and had the country over which it was established been circum- 
scribed by nature to the limits which it then had, their work would have, perhaps, 
been perfect, enduring for ages. But the wisest among them did not foresee — who, 
indeed, that was less than omniscient could have foreseen 7 — the amazing rapidity 



with whicli new settlements and new Slates have sprung up, as if by enchantment, 
in the wilderness ; or that political necessity or lust for territorial aggrandizement 
would, in sixty years, have given us new territories and Slates equal in extent to the 
entire area of tlu' country for winch they were then framing I G rVernmenl ? They 
were not priests or prophets lo that God of manifkst destiny whom we now wor- 
ship, and will continue to worship, whether united into OOe Confederacy still, or 
divol .I into many. And yet il is this very acquisition of territory which has given 
strength, thoogh not birth, to that sectionalism which already has broken in pieces 
this, the noblest Government ever devised by the wit of man. Not foreseeing the 
evil or the necessity, iln-y did nol guard against its results. Believing thai the 
great danger to the system which they were abont to inaugurate lay rather m the 
jealousy oi the ^in'.f governments towards the power and authority delegated to the 
Federal Government, they defended diligently against that danger. Apprehending 
that the larger Slates might a gg revs upon the rights of the smaller States, they pro- 
vided that no State should, wnii.nn Its consent, he deprived of i' s equal suffrage in 
the Senate. Lest the legislative department might encroach upon the executive, 
they gave to the President the self^protectins power of a qualified veto, and in turn 
made the President impeachable hy the two Houses of Congress. Satisfied that the 
several State governments were strong enough to protect themselves from Federal 
aggressions, it, indeed, not too strong for the efficiency of the General Government, 
they thus devised a system of internal checks and balances looking chiefly to the 
security of the several department! from aggression upon each other, and to prevent 
the system from being used to the oppression of individuals. I think, sir, thai the 
debates in the Federal convention and in the conventions of the several States 
called to ratify the Constitution, as well as the coternporancous letters and publica- 
tions of the lime, will support me in the statement that the friends of the Consti- 
tution wholly under-estimated the power and influence of the Government which 
they were establishing. Certainly, sir, many of the ablest statesmen of that day 
earnestly desired a stronger Government ; and it was the policy of Mr. Hamilton, 
and of the Federal party which he created, to slrengthen the General Government; 
and hence the funding and protective systems — the national bank, and other similar 
schemes of finance, along with the "general-welfare doctrine," and a liberal con- 
struction of the Constitution. 

Sir, the framers of the Constitution — and I speak it reverently, but with the free- 
dom of history — failed to foresee the strength and centralizing tendencies of the 
Federal Government. They mistook wholly the real danger to the system. They 
looked for it in the aggressions of the large States upon the small States without 
regard to geographical position, and accordingly guarded jealously in that direction, 
giving for this purpose, as I have said, the power of a self-protecting veto in the 
Senate to the small Slates, by means of their equal suffrage in that Chamber, and 
forbidding even amendment of the Constitution in this particular, without the con- 
sent of every Stale. But they stem wholly to have overlooked the danger of sec- 
tional combinations as against other sections, and to the injury and oppression 
of other sections, to secure possession of the several departments ol the Federal 
Government, and of the vast powers and influence which belong lo them. In 
like manner, too, they seem to have utterly under-estimated si.avehy as a dis- 
turbing element in the system, possibly because it existed still in almost every 
State; but chiefly because the growth and manufacture of cotton had scarce yet 
been commenced in the United States: because Cotton was not yet crowned 
king. The vast extent of the patronage of the Executive, and the immense power 
and influence which it exerts, seem also to have been altogether underestimated; 
And independent of all these, or rather perhaps in connection with them, there were 
inherent defects incident to the nature of all governments; some of them peculiar 
to our system, and to the circumstances of the country, and the character of the 
people over which it was instituted, which no human sagacity could have foreseen, 
but which have led to evils, mischiefs, and abuses, which lime and experience 
alone have disclosed. The men who made our Government were human ; th ■■> 
men, and they made it for men of like passions and infirmities with themselves. 

I propose now, sir, to inquire into the practical workings of the system ; the expe- 
riment — as the fathers themselves called it — after seventy years of trial. 

No man will deny — no American at least ; and I speak to-day to and for Ameri- 
cans — that in its results it has been the most successful of any similar Government 
ever established ; and yet, in the very midst of Us highest development and its perfect 
success, iu the very hour of its might, while ''towering in its pride of place," it has 



suddenly been stricken down by a revolution which it is powerless to control. Sir, 
if I could believe, as the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Etheridge] would seem 
to have me believe, that for more than half a century the South has had all that she 
ever asked, and more than she ever deserved ; and that now, at last, a few discon- 
tented spirits have been able to precipitate already seven States into insurrection and 
rebellion, because they are displeased with the results of a presidential election; or if 
I could persuade myself, with the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. Adams,] that 
thirteen Stales, or fifteen States, and eleven or twelve millions people have been 
already drawn or may soon be drawn into a revolt against the grandest and most 
beneficent Government, in form and in practice, that ever existed, from no other 
than the trivial and most frivolous causes which he has assigned, then I should in- 
deed regard this revolution in the midst of which we are, as the most extraordinary 
phenomenon ever recorded in history. But the muse of history will, I venture to 
say, not so write it down upon the scroll which she still holds iu her hand, in that 
grand old Hall of Representatives where, linked to time, solemnly and sadly she 
numbers out yet the fleeting hours of this perishing Republic. No; believe me, 
Representatives, the causes for these movements lie deeper and are of longer dura- 
tion than all this. If not, then the malady needs no extreme medicine, no healing 
remedies, nothing, nothing. Time, patience, forbearance, quiet — these, these alone 
will restore the Union in a few months. But, sir, I have not so read the history of 
this country, especially for the last fourteen years. The causes, I repeat, are to be 
found in the practical workings of the system, and are to be removed only by 
remedies which go down to the very root of the evil; not, indeed, by eradicating 
the passions which give it birth and strength — for even religion fails to accomplish 
that impossible mission — but by checking or taking away the power with which these 
passions are armed for their work of evil and mischief. 

I find, then, sir, the first or remote cause which has led to the incipient dismem- 
berment of the Union, in the infinite honors and emoluments, the immense, and 
continually increasing, power and patronage of the Federal Government. Every 
admission of new States; every acquisition of newterritory ; every increase of wealth, 
population, or resources of any kind ; all moral, social, intellectual, or inventive de- 
velopment — the press, the telegraph, the railroad, and the application of steam in 
every form ; whatsoever there is of greatness at home, or of national honor and 
glory abroad — all, all has inured to the aggrandizement of this central Government. 
Part of this, certainly, is the result of causes which no constitutional restriction, no 
party policy, and no statesmanship can control; but much of it, nevertheless, from 
infringements of the Constitution, and from usurpations, abuses, corruptions, and 
mal-administration of the Government. In the very beginning, as I have said, a 
fixed policy of strengthening the General Government, in every department, was 
inaugurated by the Federal party ; and this led to the bitter and vehement struggle, 
in the very first decade of the system, between the Democratic-Republicans and 
the Federalists; between the advocates of power aud the friends of liberty ; those 
who leaned strongly towards the General Government and those who were for State 
rights and State sovereignty — the followers of Hamilton and the disciples of Jeffer- 
son — which ended, in 1801, in the overthrow of the Federal party, and the inaugu- 
ration of the Democratic policy, which demanded a simple Government, a strict 
construction of the Constitution, no public debt, no protective tariff, no system of 
internal improvements, no national bank, hard money for the public dues, and eco- 
nomical expenditures ; and this policy, after a long and violent contest for more than 
forty years — a contest marked with various fortune, and occasional defeat, and some- 
times temporary departure by its own friends — at last became the established policy 
of the Government, and so continued until this pestilent sectional question of slavery 
obliterated old party divisions, and obscured and hid over, and covered up for a time — 
if, indeed, it has not removed utterly — some, at least, of the ancient landmarks of 
the Democratic party. And yet, in spite of the overthrow of the Federal party ; in 
spite of the final defeat of its policy, looking especially and purposely to the strength- 
ening of the General Government, partly from natural causes, as I have said, and 
partly because the Democratic party has sometimes been false to its professed princi- 
ples — above all, to its great doctrine of State rights, and its true and wise policy of 
economy in expenditures, and decrease in executive patronage and influence — the 
Federal Government has gone on, steadily increasing in power and strength and 
honor and consideration and corruption, too, from the hour of its inauguration to this 
day; and when I speak of "corruption," I use the word in the sense in which British 



statesmen use it — men who understand the word, and who have, for a century and 
a half, reduced the thing itself to a science and a system, and have made it an ele- 
ment of very great strength in the British government. 

Nor, sir, is this mischief, if mischief indeed it be, confined wholly to any one 
department of the General Government ? The Federal judiciary — to begin with it — 
here and in the States, dazzles the imagination aud invites the ambition of the 
lawyers, that not most numerous but yet mo>t powerful class of citizens, by its supe- 
rior honors, its great emoluments, its lift- tenure, its faith in precedents, and its settled 
forms and ancient practice, untouched by codes and unshaken by crude and reckless 
and hasty legislation. Here, in this venerable forum, where Stat.-s at home and 
States and empires from abroad, and the Federal Government itself, are accus- 
tomed to contend for the judgment of the court, whatever there vet remains of an- 
cient and black-letter law ; whatever of veneration and regard, for the names and 
memories, and the volumes of Littleton and Coke and Croke and Plowden, aud the 
year books ; or for silk gowns, and for all else, too, that is valuable in legal arc 
ology, has taken refuge, and stands intrenched. All that there was of form and 
ceremony and dignity and decorum, in the beginning of the Government, is still 
to be found here, and only here ; all but the bench and bar of forty years ago — the 
Marshalls and the Story-, the Harpers, the Pinckneys, the Wirts, and the Websters, 
of an age gone by. 

Still, the circle of honor through the judiciary is a narrow one, and it lies open to 
but few; and yet, in times past, the judiciary lias done much to enlarge the powers 
and increase the consideration and importance of the central Government. 

But it is the Senate and the House of Representatives which are (he great objects of 
ambition and the seats pf power. All the legislative powers of this great and mighty 
Republic, whose name and authority and maje -ty aie known and felt, and (eared 
too, throughout the earth, are vested in the Congress of the Uuited States. War, 
revenues, credit, disbursement, commerce, coinage, the postal system, the punish- 
ment of crimes upon the high sea- and against the law of nations, the admission of 
new States, the disposition of the public lands, armies, navies, the militia, all belong 
to it to control, together with an unnumbered, innumerable, and most indefinable 
host of implied or derivative powers: whence funding system-, hanks, protective 
tariffs, internal improvements, distributions, surveys, explorations, railroads, land 
grants, submarine telegraphs, postal steam navigation and post roads upon the high 
seas, plunder schemes, speculations and peculations, pensions, claims, the acquisition 
and government of Territories, and a lon^ train of usurpations and abuses all tend- 
ing — legitimate powers and illegitimate assumptions of power alike — to aggrandize 
the central Government, and to make its possession and control the bighi si "bject 
of a corrupt, wicked, perverted, and peculating ambition, in any party or any 
section. 

But great and imposing as the powers, honors, and consideration of Congress are, 
the executive department is scarce inferior in anything, and in some things is far supe- 
rior to it. Your President stands in the place of a king. There is a divini.'y that doth 
hedge him in; it is the divinity of patkonage. lie is the god whose priests are a 
hundred and fifty tliousar.il, an ! whose w< rshipers a host whom no man can number; 
and the sacrifices of these priests and worshipers are literally "a broken spirit. 1 ' Sir, 
your President is commander-in-chief of your armies, your navies, and of the militia — 
four millions of men. lie carries on war, concludes peace, and makes treaties of every 
sort. Through his qualified veto, h rticipant in the entire legislatii n of the 

Government, and it behooves t culators, jobbers, contractors, and 

claimants, to propitiate him as well as v ad Repi Mutative s. Dec. lis the 

Congress together on extraordinary < cessions, and adjourns them in case of disagree- 
ment. He appoints and receives embassadors and all othi r diplomatic agents ; appoints 
judges of the Supreme Court, and of other judicial tribunals; Cabinet ministers; col- 
lectors of customs, and postmasters; and controls the appointment of a hundred and 
fifty thousand other officers of every grade, from Secretary of State down to the hum- 
blest tide-waiter. All that is implied in the word " patronage," and all that is meant 
by that other word, the "spoils," — res <l< ttitdbilii ei eaduca — a word and a thing un- 
known to the fathers of the Republic, all belong to Vim to control. His power of ap- 
pointment and removal at discretion makes him the mnsti r of every man who would 
look to the Executive for honor or emolument; and its tremendous influence is re- 
flected back upon the Senate and this House, on every Senator or Representative who 
would reward his friends for their support at home, or secure new friends for a re-elec- 



8 

rton. The Constitution forbids titles of nobility ; yet your President is the fountain 
of homr. Sir, to pass by the utter and extraordinary perversion of the original par- 
pose of the Constitution in the choice of electors for the President — a porversion the 
result of caucuses, national conventions, and other party machinery, and which has led 
to those violent and debauching presidential struggles every four years for possession 
of the immense spoils of the executive office — no department has, in other respects 
also, so utterly outstripped the estimate of the founders of the Government ; except, 
indeed, of the few who, like Patrick Henry, were derided as ghost-seers and hypochon- 
driacs. 

When the elder Adams was President, the great east-room of the White House 

where now, or lately, on gala days are gathered the embassadors and ministers of a 
hundred courts, from Mexico to Japan, and the assembled wit, and fashion, and 
beauty, and distinction of the thirty-three Stales of the Union — was then used by 
the excellent and patriotic wife of the President as a drying-room for — not the maids 
of honor — but the washerwoman of the palace. 

Sir, there is an incident connected with the early settlement of this city — still the 
capital of the Republic, selected as the seat of Government by Washington, the 
father of the Republic, and bearing his honored name — an incident which shows 
how much he and the other great men who made the Constitution underestimated 
the power and importance of the Executive. This Capitol, within which we now 
deliberate, fronts to the east. There all your Presidents are inaugurated ; and it was 
the design and the expectation of the founders of the city that it should extend to 
the eastward. There, sir, there, in that direction, was to be the future Rome of the 
American continent. The Executive mansion was meant to be in the rear, and to 
be kept in the rear of the Chambers of the Legislature. A long vista through the 
original forest trees — a sort of American mall — was to connect them together; and 
the President was expected to enter below stairs and at the back door into this Capi- 
tol. But he was to be kept for the most part trans Tiberem, — on the other side of the 
Tiber. The low, marshy ground to the westward, it was supposed, would forever 
forbid the building up of a city between the seats of legislative and executive magis- 
tracy ; and the whole, if indeed ever laid out at all, might have become a great 
national park. But behold the strange perversity of man ! The city has all gone 
to the westward. The rearol the Capitol has now become its front. Pennsylvania 
Avenue, instead of a suburban drive, is now a grand thoroughfare, the chief artery 
which conveys the blood from that which is now the center or heart of the system — 
the President. The Executive mansion — that old castle, with bad fires and without 
bells, to the sore discomfort of Mistress Abigail Adams — is now, and has been for 
years, the great object of attraction ; and whereas, in the beginning, the "taverns" — 
for that was the name given them sixty years ago — all clustered around this Capitol, 
I observe that now the greatest, most nourishing, and best patronized "hotel" has 
established itself within bow-shot of the White House. Sir, the power of executive 
gravitation has proved too strong for the framers of the Government and the founders 
of the city. Westward the course of architecture has taken its way; and certainly, 
sir, certainly, it is not because of any especial attraction about that most venerable 
of ancient marts — old Georgetown. 

But to resume, sir. Notliing adds so much to the power and influence of the Exec- 
utive .is a large revenue and heavy expenditures; and if a public debt be added, so 
much the worse. Every dollar more borrowed or collected, and every dolhr more 
spent, is just so much added to the power and value of the executive office. Nothing 
in the political history of the country has been so marked as the steady, but enormous, 
increase in the taxation and disbursement of the Federal Government. Fifteen years 
ago — to g> back no further— just previous to the Mexican war, the receipts of tho 
Treasury were $29,000,000, and the expenditures $27,000,000 ; while four years ago, 
only ten years later, the receipts had run up to $69,000,000, and the expenditures to 
$71,000,000 — the latter being always, or nearly always, a little in advance of the former. 
Nature, it is said, sir, abhors a vacuum; but government, our Government, at least, 
would seem to abhor a plethoric Treasury. There are always surgeons, volunteers, 
too, at that, if need be, of a very famous school of surgery, who are ready to resort 
npon all occasions to financial phlebotomy. Verily, sir, verily these surgeons of tho 
executive household have great fiuth in a low fiscal regimen. 

The collection and disbursement of $S0,000,000 a year, for four years, is a prize 
worth every sacrifice. The power of the sword, the command of armies and navies 
and the militia, is itself a tremendous power; and from the signs around u?, from all 



9 

that everywhere meets the eye or falls upon the car, at every step throughout this 
capital, I am afraid that now at length, and before the close of the last quarter of tho 
first century of the Republic, it is about to assume a terrible signilicancy, and that 
the reign of military despotism is henceforth to bo dated frdm this year, lint great as 
this power is, it is nothing, nothing is yet in this country, compared with the power of 
the purse. He who commands thai unnumbered host of eager and humrry expectants 
whoso eyes are lixed upon the Treasury, to gay nothing o£ that other BOSl of seekers 
of office, is mightier far than tin.' commander of military legions, itleman from 

Tennessee [Mr. Etui:;: :lained us the Other day \. ith a glowing picture of the 

exodus of the present incumbents about the executive oiii <■> and elsewhece. Sir, 1 

should be pleased, when lie next addiesscs the Hume, to have his line powers <>! W\\ 
and eloquence tested by a description of the flight of the blooming i" "lit tho 

fourth of March. Certainly, >ir, certainly the departure of the army ol fat, sleei,, nn,- 
tinted, well led and well clad oflbvholdcrs, whose natural hoftiUki is the Treasury 
building, or some other of the sane soil, is a picture melancholy enough to excite 
comniiseralioii in even the hardest and the stoniest hear!. J'.ut tl ••t'that other 

mighty hosi of office seekers, fifty tfl one; lean, lank, cadaverous, hungry, hollow eyed ; 
with bones bursting through their garm-nts, and long, skinny hi r to clutch 

the spoils; a. 1 1 Btungi too, with tfa of that practical BORt of patriotism which 

loves the country for iu mai -rial benefits, would require some pact M least of the 
powers of those diabolical old pai iters ol the Spanish or Italian school. The gentle - 
will pardon me, but 1 am sure that even he is pot equal to it. 
Such, Mr. Speaker, is the central Government of ihe United States, and such its 
power* and honors and emoluments; and every year add* Mrenu'th to them. Against 

the centralizing tendencies and influences of such a Government, the States sepa- 
rately cannot contend. Neither ambition nor avarice, the lo?e of honor, or the Jove 
ol gain, iind anything to saiisl'v their large desires in the Stale governments. Sir, 
the State executives have no cabinets, no veto lor the must part, no army, no navy, 
no militia, except upon ihe peace establishment) and that commonly despised ; no 
foreign appointments, and do diplomatic intercourse; no treaties, no post office, no 
land office^ no great revenues to disburse; small salaries, and no patronage — in short, 
sir, nothing to arouse ambiliWi, or to excite avarice. The Legislatures of the Slates 
have a most valuable, but not the most dignified, field of labor. They declai ' 0* 
war, levy no imports, regulate no external commerce, coin no money, establish no 
post-routes, oceanic or overland; make no land grants, emit no bills of credit of their 
own, publish no Globe, have no franking privilege, and their senators and representa- 
tives serve the State for a few hundred dollars a year. The Slate judiciaries, how- 
ever important the litigation before them may be to the parties, attract commonly 
but small interest from the public; and ol' late years, no gnat or splendid legal reputa- 
tion is to be acquired outside of a few of the larger cities at least, either upon the 
bench or at the bar of the State courts. Whatever, sir, the dignity or power or con- 
sideration of the United States may be, thai of each Stale is but the one thirty- 
i'ounh part of it; and, indeed, for some years past, the control of the Slate govern- 
ments has. to a great extent, been sought after chiefly as an instrumentality for 
securing control of legislative, executive, or judicial position in the Federal Govern- 
ment. And all this mischief — for mischief certamlv I must regard it — has been 
steadily aggravated by the policy pursued in nearly all the States, of diminishing m 
every way, in their constitutions, and by their laws, the dignity, power, and con- 
sideration of the several departments of their State governments. Short tenures, 
low salaries, biennial sessions, crude, hasty, and continually changing legislation, 
new constitutions every ten years, and whatever else may be olftssed under ihe head 
of reform, falsely so called, have been ihe bane of Slate sovereignty and importance. 
Indeed, for years past, Stale constitutions, laws, and institutions of every sorfc seem 
to have been regarded as but so many subjects for rude and wanton experiment at 
the hands of reckless ideologists or demagogues. But besides all this, the infinite 
subdivision of political power in tho States, from the chief departments of Slate 
down through counties, townships, school districts, cities, towns, and villages, all 
which certainly is very necessary and proper in a democratic Government, tends 
very much of itself to decrease the dignitv and importance of ihe States. In short, 
sir, in nearly all the Stales, and especially in the new Stabs, the great purpose of 
the politicians would seem to have been to ascertain just how feeble and simple and 
insignificant their governments could be made — just how near to a pure and perfect 
democracy our representative form of republicanism can be carried. All this, sir, 



10 

would have been well and consistent enough, no doubt, if the States were totally dis- 
connected, or if the Federal Government could have been kept down equally low, 
simple, and democratic. Certainly, this is the true idea of a strictly democratic form 
and administration of government; and the nearer it is approached, the purer and 
better the system — in theory at least. But the experiment having been fairly tried, 
and the fact settled, that in a country so large, wealthy, populous, and enterprising 
as ours is, it is impossible to reduce down, or to keep down, the central Government 
to one of economy and simplicity ; it is the true wisdom and policy of the States to 
see to it that their own separate governments are not rendered any more insignificant, 
at least, than they are already. 

Such, sir, I repeat, then, is the central Government of the United States, and such 
its great and tremendous powers and honors and emoluments. With such powers, 
sucli honors, such patronage, and such revenues, is it any wonder, I ask, that every- 
thing, yes, even virtue, truth, justice, patriotism, and the Constitution itself, should 
be sacrificed to obtain possession of it? There is no such glittering prize to be con- 
tended for every four or two years, anywhere throughout the whole earth; and 
accordingly, from the beginning, and every year more and more, it has been the 
object of the highest and lowest, the purest and the most corrupt ambition known 
among men. Parties and combinations have existed from the first, and have been 
changed and reorganized, and built up and cast down, from the earliest period of our 
history to this day, all for the purpose of controlling the powers, and honors, and the 
moneys of the central Government. For a good many years parties were organized 
upon questions of finance or of political economy. Upon the subjects of a perma- 
nent public debt, a national bank, the public deposits, a protective tariff, internal 
improvements, the disposition of the public lands, and other questions of a similar 
character, all of them looking to the special interests of the moneyed classes, parties 
were for a long while divided. The different kinds of capitalists sometimes also dis- 
agreed among themselves — the manufacturers with the commercial men of the 
country ; and in this manner party issues were occasionally made up. But the 
great dividing line at last, was always between capital and labor — between 
the few who had money and who wanted to use^he Government to increase 
and " protect" it, as the phrase goes, and the many*who had little but wanted to 
keep it, and who only asked Government to let them alone. Money, money, sir, 
was at the bottom of the political contests of the times; and nothing so curiously 
demonstrates the immense power of money as the fact that in a country where there 
is no entailment of estates, no law of primogeniture, no means of keeping up vast 
accumulations of wealth in particular families, no exclusive privileges, and where 
universal suffrage prevails, these contests should have continued, with various for- 
tune, for full half a century. But at the last the opponents of Democracy, known 
at different periods of the struggle by many different names, but around whom the 
moneyed interests always rallied, were overborne and utterly dispersed. The Whig 
party, their last refuge, the last and ablest of the economic parties, died out ; and the 
politicians who were not of the Democratic party, with a good many more, also, who 
had been of it, but who had deserted it, or whom it had deserted, were obliged to 
resort to some other and new element for an organization which might be made strong 
enough to conquer and to destroy the Democracy, and thus obtain control of the 
Federal Government. And most unfortunately for the peace of the country, and for 
the perpetuity, I fear, of the Union itself, they found the nucleus of such an organi- 
zation ready formed to their hands — an organization odious, indeed, in name, but 
founded upon two of the most powerful passions of the human heart : sectionalism, 
which is only a narrow and localized patriotism, and anti-slavery, or love of free- 
dom, which commonly is powerful just in proportion as it is very near coming home 
to one's own self, or very far off, so that either self-interest or the imagination can 
have full power to act. 

And here let me remark, that it had so happened that almost, if not quite, from the 
beginning of the Government, thu South, or slaveholding section of the Union — partly 
because the people of the South are chiefly an agricultural and producing, a non-com- 
mercial and non-manufacturing people, and partly because there is no conflict, or little 
conflict, among them between labor and capital, inasmuch as to a considerable extent 
capital owns a large class of their laborers not of the white race; and it may be also 
because, as Mr. Burke said many years ago, the holders of slaves are " by far the most 
proud and jealous of their freedom," and because the aristocracy of birth and family, 
and of talent, is more highly esteemed among them than the aristocracy of wealth — but 



11 

no matter from what cause, the fact was that the South for fifty years was nearly always 
on the side of the Democratic party. It was the natural ally of the Democracy of the 
North, and especially of the West. Geographical position and identity of interests 
bound us together ; and till this sectional question of slavery arose, the South and the 
new States of the West were always together; and the lattc-, in the beginning at leart 
always Democratic. Sir, there was not a triumph of the Democratic party in half a 
century which was not won by the aid of the st ilesmcn and the people of the South. 
I would not be understood, however, as intimating that the South was ever slow to ap- 
propriate her full share of the spoils— the c pima tpolia of victory, or especially that the 
politicians of that great and noble- old Commonwealth of Virginia — God bless her — 
were ever remarkable for the grace of self-denial in this regard — not at all. But it was 

natural, sir, that they who had been SO many times, and for so many years, baffled and 
defeated by the aid of the South, should entertain DO very kindly feelings towards her. 
And here I must not omit to say, that all this time there was a powerful minority in 
the whole South, sometimes a majority in the whole South, and always in some of the 
States of the South, who belonged to the several parties which, at different times, con- 
tended with the Democracy for the possession and control of the Federal Government. 
Parties in those davs were nol Sectional, but extended into every St ite and every part 
of the Union. And, indeed, in the convention of 1787, the possibility, Or at least the 

probability, of sectional combinations seems, a s 1 have already said, to have been almost 
wholly overlooked. Washington, it is true, in his. Farewell Address warned us against 

them, but it was rather as a distant vision than as a near reality; and a few years later, 

Mr. Jefferson speaks of a possibility of the people of the Mississippi valley seceding 
from the East ; for even then a division of the Union, North and South, or by slave 
lines, in the Union or out of it, seems scarcely to have been contemplated. The letter 
of Mr. Jefferson upon this subject, dated ip 1803, is a curious one; and 1 commend it 
to the attention of gentlemen upon botb sides of the House. 

So longj sir, as the South maintained its equality in the Senate, ami something 
like equality in population, strength, and material resources in the couutry, there 
was little to invite aggression, While there were toe means, also, to repel ii. But, 
in the course of time, the South lost its equality in the other wing of the Capitol, 
and every year the disparity between the two sections became greater and greater. 
Meantime, too, the anti-slavery sentiment, which had lain dormant at toe North for 
many years after the inauguration of the Federal Government, began, jnst about 
the time of the emancipation m the British West Indies, to develop itself in great 
strength, and with wonderful rapidity. It had appeared, indeed, with much vio- 
lence at the period of the admission of Missouri, and even then shook the Union 
to its foundation. And yet how little a sectional controversy, based upon such a 
question, had been foreseen by the founders of the Government, may be learned 
from Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mr. Holmes, in i830,,where he speaks of it falling 
upon his ear like "a fire bell in the sight. Said he: 

" I considered it, at once, as the death knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, 
for the moment; but this is a, reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical 
line, coinciding with a m vrkt I pri . iraZ an I political" — 

Sir, it is this very coincidence of geographical line with the marked principle, 
moral and political, of slavery, which I propose to reach and to obliterate in the 
only way possible; by running other lines, coinciding with other and less dan- 
gerous principles, none of them moral, and, above all, with other and conflicting 
interests — 

" A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, 
'once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, 
' and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." * * * * 
* * * * * * " I regret that I am now to die in the belief that 

' the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation ofl776, to acquire self-govern- 
' ment and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away hy the unwise and 
' unworthy passions of their sons; and that my only consolation is to be that I shall 
1 not live to weep over it." 

Fortunate man ! He did not live to weep over it. To-day he sleeps quietly 
beneath the soil of his own Monticello, unconscious that the mighty fabric of Gov- 
ernment which he helped to rear — a Government whose foundations were laid by 
the hands of so many patriots and sages, and cemented by the blood of so many 
martyrs and heroes — hastens now, day by day, to its fall. What recks he, or that 
other great man, his compeer, fortunate in life and opportune alike in death, whose 



12 

dust they keep at Q,uincy, of those dreadful notes of preparation in every State for 
civil strife and fraternal carnage; or of that martial array which already has 
changed this once peaceful capital into a beleagured city ? Fortunate men ! They 
died while the Constitution vet survived, while the Union survived, while the spirit 
of fraternal affection still lived, and the love of true American liberty lingered yet 
in the hearts of their descendants. 

Sir, the antagonism of parties founded on money or questions of political economy 
having died out, and the balance of power between the North and the South being 
now lost, and the strength and dignity, and the revenues and disbursements — the 
patronage and spoils — of the Federal Government having grown to an enormous 
size, was anything more natural than the organization, upon any basis peculiar to the 
stronger section, of a sectional party, to secure so splendid and tempting a prize? Or 
was anything more inevitable, than that the " marked principle, moral and politi- 
cal," of slavery, coinciding with the very geographical line which divided the two sectims, 
and appealing so strongly to northern sentiments and prejudices, and against which 
it was impossible for any man or any party long to contend, should be revived? 
Unhappily, too, just about this time, the acquisition of a very large territory from 
Mexico, not foreseen or provided for by the Missouri compromise, opened wide the 
door for this very question of slavery, in a form every way the most i'avorable to the 
agitators. The VVilmot proviso, or congressional prohibition — now indeed exploded, 
but which, nevertheless received, in some form or other, the indorsement of every 
free State then in the Union — it was proposed to establish over the whole territory 
thus acquired, as well south of 36° 30' as north of that lattitude. The proposition, 
upon the other hand, to extend the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific, was 
rejected by the votes of almost the entire Whig party, and of a large majority, I 
believe, of the Democratic party of the free States. That, sir, was the fatal mistake 
of the North ; and in tribulation and anguish will she and the other sections of the 
Union, and our posterity, too, for ages, it may be, weep tears of bloody repentance 
and regret over it. 

This controversy, however, sir, after having again shaken the Union to its center, 
was at last, though with great difficulty, adjusted through the compromise measures 
of 1850, by the last of the great statesmen of the second period of the Republic. But 
four years afterwards, upon the bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Ne- 
braska, upon the principles of the legislation of 1850, the imprisoned winds — Eurus, 
Notusque, creberque procellis Africus — were all again let loose with more than the rage 
of a tropical hurricane. The Missouri restriction, which for years had been de- 
nounced as a wicked and atrocious concession to slavery, and which, some thirty 
years before, had consigned almost every free State Senator or Representative who 
supported it to political oblivion, became now a most sacred compact which it was 
sacrilege to touch. A distinguished Senator, late the Governor of Ohio, who had 
entitled his great speech against the adjustment measures of 1850, "Union and Free- 
dom without Compromise" now put forth his elaborate defense, four years later, of the 
Missouri restriction, with the rubric or text, in ambitious characters, "Maintain 
Plighted Faith.' 1 '' But, right or wrong, wise or unwise, at the time, as the repeal of that 
restriction may have seemed, subsequent acts and events have made it both a delu- 
sion and a snare. Yes, sir, I confess it. I who, as a private citizen, was one of its 
earliest defenders, make open confession of it here, to-day. It was this which gave 
a new and terrible vitality, to the languishing element of abolitionism, and which 
precipitated, at least, a crisis which, I fear, was nevertheless, sooner or later, inevi- 
table. It is the crisis of which the President elect spoke three years ago. It is, in- 
deed, reached. Would to God it were passed, also, in peace. 

But, sir, whether the leaders of the movement against the repeal of the Missouri 
restriction were consistent or inconsistent, honest or dishonest, the great mass of the 
people of the free States were roused for a time to the highest indignation by it; and 
inasmuch as the Whig party was just then falling to pieces, wicked, or reckless, or 
short-sighted men, eagerly seized upon this unsettled condition of the public mind, to 
reorganize the Free-Soil party of 1848, under a new and captivating name, but very 
nearly upon the principles of the Buffalo platform of that year; thus abandoning the 
extreme abolition sentiments of the Liberty party, and bringing up the great majority 
of the Whig party, and not a few of the Democratic party also, to tht- free-soil and 
non-slavery extension principle ; and by this compromise, forming and consolidating 
that powerful party, which, for the first time in our history, by a mere sectional plurality 
— in a minority in fact by a million of votes — has obtained possession of the power and 



13 

patronage of the central Government Sir, if all this had happened solely by accident, 
and were likely never to be repeated, portentous as it might be of present evil, it would 
have caused, and ought to have caused, noneof the disasters which havealreadv followed. 
But the i>ki:ah SECRET once disclosed, thai, the imi.e OS) pOW< fa Mid revenues "and honors 
and spoils, of this great and mighty Republic, may he easilv won, by a mere motions] 
majority, upon a popular sectional issue, will never die; ami new aggressions and new 
issues must continually spring from it. This is the philosophy and the justification of 

the alarm and consternation which have shaken the South from the Potomac bo the 
Gulf. It [fl the philosophy and the justilieatinn, too, of the amendment of the gentleman 
from Massachusetts, [Mr. An.\>;>, ] and of all the other propositions f<>r new adjust) 
and new guarantees! Sir, the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Sbdowick,] was 

when he said that there never was any irreat event which ilid not Spring from BOm« 
adequate cause. The South is afraid of your sectional majority, organized and con- 
solidated upon the abstract principle "I hostility to slavery generally, and the piactiosJ 
application of that principle to the exclusion of slavery from all the Territories, and its 
restriction by the power ol thai sectional majority, to where it now exists. And 

be not the fundamental doctri I the Republican party, I shall be greatly obliged to 

same gentleman of that party to tell me what its Fundamental doearin 

Bat un jn stand oppressive as the South feel their exclusion from the common 
territories of the States to he. they know well, also, that the propelling power of" a 
great moral and religious principle, as it is regarded in the North, added to the still 
more enduring, persistent, and prudent passion of ambition, of thirst for power and 
place, for the honors and emoluments f sucn a Government as ours. With Us half a 
million of dependents sad expectants, and its eighty millions of revenues and disburse- 
ments, all, all to be secured by the Aladdin^ lamp of a sectional majority, < 
be arrested or extinguished by anything short of the suppression of the power \ 
makes it potent for mischief. And nothing less than this, he assured, will satisfy 
any considerable number of even the more moderate of tile people of the border 
slave States, and certainly without it there is not the slightest hope of the return pf 
the States upon the Gulf, and thus of a restoration of the Union as it existed but 
three months ago. The statesmen and the people of all of these States well know. 
also, that by the tivtl law of every country among individuals, and by the 
law of nations, as between sovereign and foreign States, the power to aggress, along 
with the threat and the preparation to aggress, is a good cause why an individual 
or a State should be requited to give some adequate assurance that the power shall 
not be used to execute the threat; or, otherwise, that the power shall itself be taken 
away. Apply now, sir, these principles to the case in hand. The North has the 
power; that power is m the hands of the Republican party, and already, they have 
resolved to use it for the exi lusioil of the South from all the Territories. There 

shall be no more extension of slavery. More "than this, the leaden of the party 

many of them leaders an J founders of the old Liberty Guard, the original Abo- 
lition party of the North — the very men who brought the masses of the Whig party 
and many of the Democratic party from utter indifference and non-intervention 
years ago, upon the question of slavery up to the point of no more slavery extension, 
and persuaded them, in spite of the warning voice of Washington, in the very face 
of the appalling danger of disunion, to unite for this purpose, in a powerful sectional 
party, for the first time in the history of the Government — these self-same It 
proclaim now, not indeed as present doctrines or purposes of the Republican party ; 
but as solemn abstract truths, as fixed, existing facts, that there is a " higher law' 1 
than the Constitution, and an "irrepressible conflict" of principle and interest be- 
tween the dominant and the minority sections of the Union ; and that one or the 
other must conquer in the conflict. Sir, in this contest with ballot .. who is it that 
must conquer — the section ol the minority or the section of the majority ? 

And now, sir, when sentiments like these are held and proclaimed — deliberately, 
solemnly, repeatedly proclaimed — by men, one of whom is now the President 
and the other the Sec-etary of State of the incoming Administration, is it at all BOf- 
prising that the State> of tin- South should be filled with excitement and alarm, or 
that they should demand, as almost with one voice they have demanded, adequate. 
and complete guarantees for their rights and security against aggression ! Right or 
wrong, justifiably or without cause, they have done it: and 1 lament to say that 
some of the States have even c r "n<' so far as to throw off wholly the authority of the 
Federal Government, and withdraw themselves from the Union. Sir, I will not 
discuss the right of secession. It is of no possible avail, now, either to maintain or 



14 

to condemn it : yet it is vain to tell me that States cannot secede. Seven States have 
seceded ; they now refuse any longer to recognize the authority of this Government, 
and already have entered into a new confederacy and set up a provisional government 
of their own. In three months their agents and commissioners will return from 
Europe with the recognition of Great Britain and France and of the other great 
Powers of the continent. Other States at home are preparing to unite with this new 
confederacy, if you do not grant to them their just and equitable demands. The 
question is no longer one of mere preservation of the Union. That was the question 
when we met in this Chamber some two months ago. Unhappily, that day has 
passed by; and whHeyour " perilous committee of thirty-three" debated and delibe- 
rated to gain time — yes, to gain time — for that was the insane and most unstatesman- 
like cry in the beginning of the session, star after star shot madly from our political 
firmament. The question to-day is : how shall we now keep the States we have and 
restore those which are lost ? Ay, sir, restore, till every wanderer shall have returned , 
and not one be missing from the "starry flock. " 

If, then, Mr. Speaker, I have justly and truly stated the causes which have led to 
these most disastrous results ; if indeed the control of the immense powers, honors, 
and revenues — the spoils — of the Federal Government ; in a word, if the possession of 
power and the temptation to abuse it be the primary cause of the present dismember- 
ment of the United States, ought noc every remedy proposed to reach at once the very 
seat of the disease ? And why, sir, may not the malady be healed ? Why cannot this 
controversy be adjusted? Has, indeed, the Union of these States received the immedi- 
cable wound? I do not believe it. Never was there a political crisis for which wise, 
courageous, and disinterested statesmen could more speedily devise a remedy. British 
statesmen would have adjusted it in a few weeks. Twice certainly, if not three times, 
in this century, they have healed troubles threatening a dissolution of the monarchy 
and civil war ; and each time healed them by yielding promptly to the necessities which 
pressed upon them, giving up principles and measures to which they had every way for 
years been committed. They have learned wisdom from the obstinacy of the King 
who lost to Great Britain her thirteen colonies, and have been taught by that memo- 
rable lesson to concede and to compromise in time, and to do it radically; and history 
has pronounced it statesmanship, not weakness. In each case, too, they yielded up, 
not doctrines and a policy which they were seeking for the lirst time to establish, but 
the ancient and settled principles, usages, and institutions of the realm ; and they 
vielded up these to save others yet more essential, and to maintain the integrity of the 
empire. They did save it, and did maintain it; and to-day Great Britain is stronger 
and more prosperous and more secure than any Government on the globe. 

Sir, no man had for a longer time, or with more inexorable firmness, opposed 
Catholic emancipation than the Duke of Wellington. Yet, when the issue came at 
last between emancipation or civil war, the hero of a hundred battle-fields, the con- 
queror at Waterloo, the greatest military commander, except Napoleon, of modern 
times ; yes, the Iron Duke, lost not a moment, but yielded to the storm, and him- 
self led the party which carried the great measure of peace and compromise through 
the very citadel of conservatism — the House of Lords. Sir, he sought no middle 
ground, no half-way measure, confessing weakness, promising something, doing 
nothing. And in that memorable debate he spoke words of wisdom, moderation, 
and true courage, which I commend to gentlemen in this House ; to our Wellington 
outside of it, and to all others anywhere, whose parched jaws seem ravenous for 
blood. He said : 

" It has been my fortune to have seen much of war — more than most men. I have 
' been constantly engaged in the active duties of the military profession from boyhood 
' until I have grown gray. My life has been passed in familiarity with scenes of death 
' and human suffering. Circumstances have placed me in countries where the 
' war was internal — between opposite parties in the same nation; and rather than a 
' country I loved should be visited with the calamities which I have seen, with the 
1 unutterable horrors of civil toar, I would run any risk ; I would make any sacrifice ; 
1 I would freely lay down my life. There is nothing which destroys property and 
' prosperity, and demoralizes character, to the extent which civil war does. By it, 
' the hand of man is raised against his neighbor, against his brother, and against his 
' father ; the servant betrays his master, and the master ruins his servant. Yet this is 
1 the resource to which we must have looked, these are the means which we must have 
' applied, in order to have put an end to this state of things, if we had not embraced the 
' option of bringing forward the measure for which I hold myself responsible." 



15 

Two years later, sir, in a vet more dangerous crisis upon the Reform Bill, which 
the Commons had rejected, and when civil commotion and discord, if not revolu- 
tion, were again threatened, and it became necessary to dissolve the Parliament, and 
for that purpose to secure the consent of a King adverse to the dissolution, the Lord 
Chancellor of England, one of the most extraordinary men of the age, by perhaps 
the boldest and most hazardous experiment ever tried upon royalty, surprised the 
King into consent, assuring him that the further existence of the Parliament was 
incompatible with the peace ^and safety of the kingdom; and baring without the 
royal command, gammoned the great officers of State, prepared the crown, the robes, 
the Kin^'-, speech, and whatever else was needed, and, at the risk of the penalties oi 
high treason, ordered also the attendance of the troops required by the usages of the 
ceremony, he hurried the King to the Chamber of the House of Lords, where, M 
the presence of the Commons, the Parliament was dissolved, while each Hou-e was 
still in hirrh debate, and without other notice m advance than the sound of the can- 
non wlueh announced his Majesty's approach. Yet all this was done m the midst 
of threatened insurrection and rebellion; when the Duke of Wellington, the Duke ol 
Cumberland, and other noblemen, were assaulted in the streets, and their houses 

broken into and mobbed; when London itself was threatened with capture, and the 
dyin? Sir Walter Bcotl was hooted and reviled by ruffians at the polls. It vrfl 
while the kingdom was one vast mob; while the cry rang through all England^ Ire- 
land, and Scotland, that the. bill must be carried through Parliament or uver Parlia- 
ment ; if possible, by peaceable means; if not possible, then by force; and when the 
Prime Minister declared in the Mouse of Commons that, by reason of its defeat, 
''much blood would be shed in the struggle between the contending parties, and that 
he was perfectly convinced that the British Constitution would perish in the con- 
flict." And, sir, when all else failed, the King himself at last gave permission in 
writing, to Earl Grey and the Lord Chancellor, to create as many new peers as might 
be necessary to secure a majority for the reform hill in the House of Lords. 

Such, sir! is British statesmanship. They remember, but we have forgotten, trie 
lessons which our fathers taught them. Sir, it will be the opprobrium of American 
statesmanship forever that this controversy of ours shall be permitted to end in final 
and perpetual dismemberment of the Union. 

I propose now, sir, to consider briefly the several propositions before the House, 
looking to the adjustment of our difficulties by constitutional amendment, in con- 
nection also with those which I have myself had the honor to submit. 

Philosophically or logically considered, there are two ways in which the work 
before us may be effected: the first, by removing the temptation to aggress; the 
second, by taking the power away. Now, sir, 1 am free to confess that 1 do not see 
how any amendment of the Constitution can diminish tin; powers, dignity, or 
patronage of the Federal Government, consistently with the just distribution of 
power between the several departments; or between the States and the General 
Government, consistently with its necessary strength and efficiency?. The evil 
here lies rather in the administration than in the organization of the system ; and a 
large part of it is inherent in the administration of every government. The virtue 
and intelligence of the people, and the capacity and honesty of their representatives 
in every department, must be intrusted with the mitigation and correction of the 
mischief. The less the legislation of every kind, the smaller the revenues, and 
fewer the disbursements; the less the Government shall have to do, every way. with 
debt, credit, moneyed influences, and jobs and schemes of every sort, the longer 
peace can be maintained; and the more the number of the employees and dependents 
on Government can be reduced, (lie less will be the patronage and the corruption of 
the system, and the less, therefore, the motive to sacrifice truth and justice, and to 
overleap the Constitution to secure the control of it. In other words, the more you 
diminish temptation, the more you will deliver us from evil. 

But I pass this point by without further remark, inasmuch as none of the plans 
of adjustment proposed, either here or in the Senate, look to any change of the Consti- 
tution in this respect. They all aim — every one of them — at checking the POWER 
to atrijress; and, except the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. 
AnAM-s] which goes much further than mine in giving a negative upon one subject 
to every slave State in the Union, they propose to effect their purpose- by mere con- 
stitutional prohibitions. It is not my purpose, sir, to demand a vote upon the propo- 
sitions which I have myself submitted. I have not the party position, nor the 
power behind me, nor with me, nor the age, nor the experience which would justify 



16 

me in assuming the lead in any great measure of peace and conciliation ; but I 
believe, and very respectfully 1 suggest it, that something similar, at least, to these 
propositions will form a part of any adequate and final adjustment which may 
restore all the States to the Federal Union. No, sir; I am able now only to follow 
where others may lead. 

I shall vote for the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. 
Adams.] (though it does not go far enough,) because it ignores and denies the moral 
or religious element of the anti-slavery agitation, and thus removes so far, at least, 
its most dangerous sting — fanaticism — and dealing with the question as one of mere 
policy and economy, of pure politics alone, proposes a new and most comprehensive 
guarantee for the peculiar institution of the States of the South. 1 shall vote also 
for the Crittenden propositions — as an experiment, and only as an experiment — be- 
cause they proceed upon the same general idea which marks the Adams amendment ; 
and whereas, for the sake of peace and the Union, the latter would give a new 
security to slavery in the States, the former, for the self-same great and paramount 
object of Union and peace, proposes to give a new security also to slavery in the 
Territories south of the latitude 36° 30'. If the Union is worth the price which 
the gentleman from Massachusetts volunteers to pay to maintain it, is it. not richly 
worth the very small additional price which the Senator from Kentucky demands 
as the possible condition of preserving it? Sir, it is the old parable of the Roman 
sybil ; and to-morrow she will return with fewer volumes, and it may be at a higher 
price. 

I shall vote to try the Crittenden proposition , because, also, I believe that they 
are perhaps the least which even the mure moderate of the slave States would under 
any circumstances be willing to accept; and because north, south, and west, the people 
seem to have taken hold of them and to demand them of us, as an experiment at least. 
I am ready to try, also, if need be, the propositions of the border State committee, or 
of the peace congress ; or any other fair, honorable, and reasonable terms of adjustment 
which may so much as promise even, to heal our present troubles, and to restore the 
Union of these States. Sir, I am ready and willing and anxious to try all things and 
to do all things " whieb may become a man," to secure that great object whicb is near- 
est to my heart. 

But, judging all of these propositions, nevertheless, by the lights of philosophy and 
statesmanship, and as I believe they will be regarded by the historian who shall come 
after us, I find in them all two capital defects which will, in the end, prove them to be 
both unsatisfactory to large numbers alike of the people of the free and the slave States, 
and wholly inadequate to the great purpose of the reconstruction and future pres- 
ervation of the Union. None of them — except that of the gentleman from Massachu- 
setts, [Mr. Adams,] and his in one particular only — proposes to give to the minority 
section any veto or self-protecting power against those aggressions, the temptation to 
which, and the danger from which, are the very cause or reason for the demand for any 
new guarantees at all. They who complain of violated faith in the past, are met only 
with new promises of good faith for the future ; they who tell you that you have broken 
the Constitution heretofore, are answered with proposed additions to the Constitution, 
so that there may be more room for breaches hereafter. The only protection here 
offered against the aggressive spirit of the majority, is the simple pledge of power that 
it wiil not abuse itself; nor aggress, nor usurp, nor amplify itself to attain its ends. 
You place in the distance, the highest honors, the largest emoluments, the most glitter- 
ing of all prizes; and then you propose, as it were, to exact a promise from the race 
horse that he will accommodate his speed to the slow-moving pace of the tortoise. Sir, 
if I meant terms of equality, I would give the tortoise a good ways the start in the race. 

My point of objection, therefore, is, that you do not allow to that very minority 
which, because it is a minority, and because it is afraid of your aggressions, is now 
about to secede and withdraw itself from your Government, and set up a separate 
confederacy of its own, you do not allow to it the power of self-protection within 
the Union. If, Representatives, you are sincere in your protestations that you do 
not mean to aggress upon the rights of this minority, you deny yourselves nothing 
by these new guarantees. If you do mean to aggress, then this minority has a right 
to demand self-protection and security. 

But, sir, there remains yet another, and a still stronger objection to these several 
propositions. Every one of them proposes to recognize, and to embody in the Con- 
stitution, that very sort of sectionalism which is the immediate instrumentality of 
the present dismemberment of these States, and the existence of which is, in my 
judgment, utterly inconsistent with the peace and stability of the Union. Every 



17 

one of them recognizes and perpetuates the division line between slave labor and 
free labor, that self-same "geographical Line, coinciding with the marked principle, moral 
and political" of slavery, which so startled the prophetic ear of Jefferson, and which 
he foretold, forty years ago, every irritation would mark deeper and .deeper, till, at 
last, it would destroy the Union itself. They one and all recognize slavery as an 
existing and paramount element in the politics of the country, and yet only promise 
that the non-slaveholding majority section, immensely in the majority, will not 
aggress upon the rights or trespass upon the interests of the riaveholding minority 
section, immensely in the minority. Ad nt Jupiter et Mar 8? 

Sir, just so long as .slavery is recognized as an element in politics at all — ju-t SO 
long as the dividing line between the slave labor and the tree labor Stairs is kept up 
as the only line, with the disparity between them growing every day greater and 
greater — just so Ion lt it will be impossible to keep the peace and maintain a Federal 
Union between them. However sufficient any of these plans of adjustment might 
have been one year ago, or even in December last when proposed, and prior to the 
secession of any of the States, I Fear that they will be found utterly inadequate to 
restore the Union now. I do not believe that alone they will avail to bring back 
the States which have seceded, and therefore to withhold the other slave States from 
ultimate secession ; for surely no man lit to be B statesman can fail to foresee that 
unless the cotton Slates can be returned to the Union, the border States must and 
will, sooner or later, follow them out of it. As between two confederacies — the 
one non-slaveholding, and the other slaveholding — all the States of the South must 
belong to the latter, except possibly Maryland and Delaware, and they of course 
could remain with the former only upon the understanding that just as soon as prac- 
ticable slavery should be abolished within their limits, if fifteen slave States can- 
not protect themselves, and feel secure in a Union with eighteen anti-slavery States, 
how can eight slave Slates maintain their position and their rights in a Union with 
nineteen, or with thirty, anti-slavery States? The question, therefore, is not merely 
what will keep Virginia in the Union, but also what will bring Georgia back. And 
here let me say that I do not doubt that there is a large and powerful Union senti- 
ment still surviving in all the Slates which have seceded, South Carolina alone 
perhaps excepted ; and that if the people of those States can be assured that they 
shall have the power to protect themselves by their own action within the Union, 
they will gladly return to it, very greatly preferring protection witlA to security 
outside of it. Just now, indeed, the fear of danger, and your persistent and obsti- 
nate refusal to enable them to guard agaiast it, have delivered the people of those 
States over into the hands and under the control of the real secessionists and dis- 
unionists among them; but give them security and the means of enforcing it ; above 
all, dry up this pestilent fountain of slavery agitation as a political element in both 
sections, and, my word for it, the ties of a common ancestry, a common kindred, and 
common language ; the bonds of a common interest, common danger, and common 
safety; the recollections of the past, and of associations not yet dissolved, and the 
bright hopes of a future to all of us, more glorious and resplendent than any other 
country ever saw ; ay, sir, and visions, too, of that old flag of the Union, and of the 
music of the Union, and precious memories of the statesmen and heroes of the dark 
days of the Revolution, will fill their souls yet again with desires and yearnings 
intense for the glories, the honors, and the material benefits, too, of that Union which 
their fathers and our fathers made; and they will return to it, not as the prodigal, 
but with songs and rejoicing, as the Hebrews returned from the captivity to the 
ancient city of their kings. 

Proceeding, sir, upon the principles which I have already considered, and applying 
them to the- ciuses which, step by step, have led to our present troubles, I have ven- 
tured with great deference to submit the propositions which arc upon the table of the 
House. While not inconsistent with any of the other pending plans of adjustment, 
they are, in my judgment, and again I speak it with becoming deference, fully adequate 
to secure that protection from aggression, without which there can be no confidence, 
and therefore no ] ration for the Union. 

There are two maxims, sir, applicable to all constitutional reform, both of which it 
has been my purpose to follow. In the first place, n it to amend more or further than 
is necessary for the mischief to be remedi <1 ; and next, to foil >\v Strictly the principles 
of the Constitution, which -.s to bo amended; nnd corollary t> these I might add that, 
in framing amendments, the words and phrases of the Constitution ought so far as prac- 
ticable to be adopted. 



18 

1 propose, then, sir, to do as all others in the Senate and the House have done, so far 
— to recognize the existence of sections as a fixed fact, which, lamentable as it is, can 
no longer be denied or suppressed; but, for the reasons I have already stated, I pro- 
pose to establish four instead of two grand sections of the Union, all of them well known 
or easily designated by marked, natural, or geographical lines and boundaries. I pro- 
pose four sections instead of two; because, if two only are recognized, the natural and 
inevitable division will be into shareholding and nou-slaveholding sections ; and it is 
this very division, cither by constitutional enactment, or by common consent, as hith- 
erto, which, in my deliberate judgment and deepest conviction, it concerns the peace 
and stability of the Union should be forever hereafter ignored. Till then there cannot 
be, and will not be, perfect union and peace between these United States; becaus?, in 
the first place, the nature of the question is such that it stirs up, necessarily, as forty 
years of strife conclusively proves, the strongest and the bitterest passions and antago- 
nism possible among men ; and, in the next place, because the nonslaveholding section 
has now, and will have to the end, a steadily increasing majority, and enormously dis- 
proportioned weight and influence in the Government; thus combining that which 
never can be very long resisted in any Government — the temptation and the power to 
aggress. 

Sir, it was not the mere geographical line which so startled Mr. Jefferson in 1820 ; 
but the coincidence of that line with the marked principle, moral and political, of 
slavery. And now, sir, to remove this very mischief which he predicted, and which 
has already happened, it is essential that this coincidence should be obliterated ; and 
the repeated failure, fo r years past, of all other compromises based upon a recogni- 
tion of this coincidence, has proved beyond doubt that it cannot be obliterated unless 
it be by other and conflicting lines of principle and interests. I propose, therefore, 
to multiply the sections, and thus efface the slave-labor and free-labor division, and 
at the same time, and in this manner, to diminish the relative power of each section. 
And to prevent combinations among these different sections, I propose, also, to aMow 
a vote in the Senate by sections, upon demand of one-third of the Senators of any 
section, and to require the concurrence of a majority of the Senators of each sec- 
tion in the passage of any measure in which, by the Constitution, it is necessary .that 
the House, and therefore, also, the President, should concur. All this, sir, is perfectly 
consistent with the principles of the Constitution, as shown in the division of the 
legislative department into the two Houses of Congress ; the veto power ; the two- 
thirds vote olrboth Houses necessary to pass a bill over the veto ; the provisions in 
regard to the ratification of treaties and amendments of the Constitution ; but espe- 
cially in the equal representation and suffrage of each State in the Senate, whereby 
the vote of Delaware, with a hundred thousand inhabitants, vetoes the vote of New 
York, with her population of nearly four millions. If the protection of the smaller 
States against the possible aggressions of the larger States required, in the judgment 
of the framers of the Constitution, this peculiar and apparently inequitable provis- 
ion, why shall not the protection, by a similar power of veto, of the smaller and 
weaker sections against the aggressions of the larger and stronger sections, not be 
now allowed, when time and experience have proved the necessity of just such a 
check upon the majority ? Does anyone doubt that, if the men who made the Con- 
stitution had foreseen that the real danger to the system lay not in aggression by the 
large upon the small States, but in geographical combinations of the strong sections 
against the weak, they would have guarded jealously against that mischief, just as 
they did against the danger to which they mistakenly believed the Government to 
be exposed? And if this protection, sir, be now demanded by the minority as the 
price of the Union, so just and reasonable a provision ought not for a moment to be 
denied. Far better this than secession and disruption. This would, indeed, enable 
the minority to fight for their rights in the Union, instead of breaking it in pieces 
to secure them outside of it. 

Certainly, sir, it is in the nature of a veto power to each section in the Senate ; but 
necessity requires it, secession demands it, just as twice in the history of the Roman 
Commonwealth secession demanded and received the power of the ti ibunitiau veto a3 
he price of a restoration of the Republic. The secession to the Sacred Mount secured, 
just as a second secession half a century later restored, the veto of the tribunes of the 
people, and reinvigorated and preserved the Roman constitution fcr three hundred 
years. Vetoes, checks, balances, concurrent majorities — these, sir, arc the true conser- 
vators of free Government 



to 

But it is not in legislation alone that tho danger or the temptation to aggress is to be 
found. Of the tremendous po.ve.- and influence of the Kxecutive I have already spoken. 
And, indeed, the present revolutionary movements arc the result of the apprehension 
of executive usurpation and encroachments to the injury of the right)! of the South. 
But for secession because of thi-t apprehended danger, the 1 tired -panne nt would 
have remained, for the present at Ieast^ in other and safer hands. 11 
for equal protection and guarantee etional combinations and majorities to se- 

cure the election of the President, and to << ntrol bim when sleeted. I propose, there- 
fore, that a concurrent majority of the electors^ or Si I . as the case may 
require, qf; each section, shall be l President and Vice Presi- 
dent; and lest, by reason of this increased complexity, there may be ■ failure of choice 
oftener t'uai. , I propose also a Bpeeiai election in Buch caa •, and an extension 
o£ the term in all cased to six years. This is the outline of the plan; the details may 
be learned in ftltt frOtO the joint resolution itself; anil will not detain the House by 
any further explanation now. 

Sir, the natural and inevitable result of these amendm uits will be to preclude the 
jliiy of sectional parties and combinations to obtain possession of either the 
legislative or tbe executive power and patronage of the Federal QpvernmeaJ; 
and, if not to suppress totally, n! least, veiy greatly to diminish the evil results 
of national caucuses, conventions, and Otb.ec similar party appliaue is. It will no 
longer be possible to elect a President by the votes of a mere dominant ami majority 
section. Sectional issues mu t cease, ib the basis at least of large party organiza- 
tions. Ambition, or lust for power and place, must look no longer \C its own section, 
but to the whole country ; and lie who would be President, or in any way the fore- 
most among his countrymen, must consult, henceforth, the combined good and the 
good will, too, of all the sections, and in this way, consistently with the Constitu- 
tion, can the "general welfare' he best attained. ' Thus, indeed, will the result be, 
m-tcai of a narrow, illiberal, and sectional policy, an enlarged pah uni-un and ex- 
tended public spirit. 

If it be ur^ed that the plan is too complex, ind therefore impracticable, I answer 
that that was the objection in the beginning to the whole Federal system, and to 
almost every part of it. It is the argument of the French Republicans against the 
division of the legislative department into two Chambers; and it was the argument 
especially ur:jcd at first against the entire plan or idea of the electoral colleges for 
the choice of a President. Hut, if complex, I answer again, It will prevent more 
evil than good. If it suspend some Legislation for a time, I answer, The world is 
governed too much. If it cause delay sometimes in both legislation and the choice 
of President. I answer yet again, Better, far better, this than disunion and the ten 
thousand complexities, peaceful and belligerent, which must attend it. Better, 
infinitely better this, in the Union, than separate confederacies outside of it, 
with either perpetual war or entangling and complicated alliances, offensive and 
defensive, from henceforth forever. To the South I say, If you are afraid of free 
State aggressions by Congress or the Executive, here is abundant proWelion for 
even the most timid. To the Republican party of the North and West I say, If you 
really tremble, as for years past you would have had us believe, over that 
terrible, hut somewhat mythical, monster — the slave i'owkr — here, too. is the 
utmost security for you against the possibility of its aggressions. An I from first 
to last, allow me to say that, being wholly negative in its | rovisron?, this plan can 
only prevent evil, and not work any positive evil itself* It is a shield for de- 
fense; not a sword for aggression. In one word, let me add that the whole 
purpose and idea of this plan of adjustment which I propose, is to give to the I 
sections inside of the Union that power of self-protection which they are re- 
solved, or will some day or other be resolved, to secure for themselves outside of the 
Union. 

I propose further, sir, that neither Congress, nor a Territorial Legislature shall 
have power to interfere with the equal righl of migration, from all sections, into the 
Territories of tbe United States J and that neither shall have power to destroy or 
impair any rights of either person or property, in thee Territories; and, finally, that 
new States, either when annexed or when formed out of any of the Territories-, with 
the consent of Congress, shall be admitted into the Union, with any constitution, 
republican in form, which the people of such States may ordain. 

And now, gentlemen of the South, why cannot you accept it? The Federal 
Government has never yet, m any way, aggressed upon your rights. Hitherto, in- 



20 

deed, it has been in your own, or at least in friendly hands. You only fear — being in 
the minority — that it will aggress, because it has now fallen under the control of 
those, who, you believe, have the temptation, the will, and the power to aggress. 
But this plan of adjustment proposes to take away the power; and of what avail will 
the temptation or the will then be, without the power to execute? Both must soon 
perish. 

And why cannot you, of the Republican party, accept it ? There is not a word about 
slavery in it, from beginning to end: I mean in the amendments. It is silent upon the 
question. South of 36° 80'j and east of the Rio Grande, there is scarce any territory 
which is not now within the limits of some existing State; and west of that river, and 
of the Rocky Mountains, as well as north of 30° 30' and east of those mountains, 
though any new State should establish slavery, still her vote would be counted in the 
Senate and in the electoral colleges with the non-slaveholding section to which she would 
belong ; just as if, within the limits of the South, any State should abolish slavery, or 
any new State not tolerating slavery should be, admitted, the vote of such State would 
also be cast with the section of the South. However slavery might be extended, as a 
mere form of civilization or of labor, there could be no extension of it as a mere aggres- 
sive political element in the Government. If the South only demand that the Federal 
Government shall not be used aggressively to prohibit the extension of slavery ; if she 
does not desire to use it herself, upon the other hand, positively to extend the institu- 
tion, then she may well be satisfied; and if you of the Republican party do not really 
mean to aggress upon slavery where it now exists; if you are not, in fact, opposed to 
the admission of any more slave Slates ; if, indeed, you do not any longer propose to 
use the powers of the Federal Government positively and aggressively to prohibit 
slavery in the Territories, but are satisfied to allow it to take its natural course, accord- 
ing to tho laws of interest or of climate, then you, too, may well be content with this 
plan of adjustment, since it does not demand of yon, openly and publicly, to deny, ab- 
jure, and renounce, in so many words, the more mod irate principles and doctrines which 
you have this session professed. And yet, candor obliges me to declare, that this plan 
of settlement, and every other plan, whatsoever, which is of the slightest value — even 
the amendment of the gentleman from Massachuseets, [Mr. Adams,] is a virtual disso- 
lution of the Republican party, as a mere sectional and anti-slavery organization ; and 
this, too, will, in my judgment, be equally the result, whether we compromise at all, 
and the Union be thus restored, or whether it be finally and forever dissolved. The 
people of the North and the West will never trust the destroyers — for destroyers, in- 
deed, you will be, if you reject all fair terms of adjustment — the destroyers of our Gov- 
ernment, and such a Government as this, with the Administration and control of any 
other. You have now the executive department, as the result of the late election. 
Better, far better, reorganize and nationalize your party, and keep the Government for 
four years in peace, and with a Union of thirty-four States, than with the shadow and 
mockery of a broken and disjointed Union of sixteen or nineteen States, ending, at last, 
in total and hopeless dissolution. 

Having thus, sir, guarded diligently the rights of the several States and sections, and 
given to each section also the power to protect itself inside of the Union from aggres- 
sion, I propose next to limit and to regulate the alleged right of secession, since this, 
from a dormant abstraction, has now become a practical question of tremendous import. 
As long, sir, as secession remained an untried and only menaced experiment, that con- 
fidence without which no Government can be stable or efficient, was not shaken, be- 
cause it was believed that actual secession would never be tried ; or if tried, that it must 
speedily and ingloriously fail. The popular faith, cherished for years, has been thattho 
Union could net be dissolved. To that faith the Republican party was indebted for its 
success in the late election ; and we who predicted its dissolution were smitten upon 
the cheek and condemned to feed upon bread of affliction and water of affliction, like 
the prophet whom Ahab hated. But paitial dissolution has already occurred. Seces- 
sion has been tried and has proved a speedy and a terrible success. The practicability 
of doing it and the way to da it, have both been established. Sir, the experiment may 
readily be repeated; It will be repeated. And is it not madness and folly, then, to call 
back, by adjustment, trie States which have seceded, or to hold back the States which 
arc threatening to secede, without providing some safeguard against the renewal of this 
most simple and disastrous experiment? (Jan foreign nations have any confidence here- 
after in the stability of a Government which may so readily, speedily, and quietly bo 
dissolved ? Can we have any confidence among ourselves? 

If it be said that it would have availed nothing to check secession in the Gulf 
States, even had there been a constitutional prohibition of it, I answer, perhaps not, 



21 

if it had been total and absolute, for there would have been no alternative but sub- 
mission or revolution ; and henee 1 propose only to define and restrain and to regu- 
late tin's alleged right. liut I deny that, if a particular modi of recession had been 
prescribed by the Constitution, and thus every other mode prohibited, it would have 
been possible to have secured, in any of the seceding Slates— no, not even in South 
Carolina — a majority in favor of separate State secession, . n in any other 

way than that provided in the Oodsfifutfcm. Nb, sfrj it was the almost universal 
beliel in the cotton States in the unlimited right . ;,—a doctrine r>.co<inized 

by lew in the free Slates, but held to by a gr< I not very generally, all over 

the slave Stales — which made f&ea f. It is hard to bring any consider- 

ablc number of the people of the United States— suddenly, at least— up to the po Dt 
of a palpable violation of the Coustitutiou ; but it is easy, very easy, to draw them 
into any act which seems to be only the exercise of one right for the purpose of 
securing and preserving the higher rights of life, libertj . and property ibr 1 a 

whole State or B whole section. Sir, it is because of this very idea or nolionamong 
the people of the Gulf Slates, that they were exercising a right reserved under the 
Constitution, that secession there, and the establishment of a new confederacy and 
provisional government, have been marked by so much rapidity, order, ami method, 
all through the ballot-box, and not with the halter, or at the point of the bayonet, 
over oppressed minorities; and, for the most part, with so few of the excesses and 
irregularities which have characterized the progress of other revolu'.ioris. I would 
not prohibit totally the right of secession, lest Violent revolution^ should follow; for 
where laws and constitutions are to be overleaped, and they who make the revolution 
avow it to be a revolution, and claim no right except the universal rights of man, 
such revolutions are commonly violent and bloody within themselves} and even if 
not, they cannot be resisted by the established authorities except at the cost of civil 
war; while, if submitted to in silence, they tend to demoralize all government. It 
is of vital importance, therefore, every way, in my judgment, that the exercise of 
this certainly quazi revolutionary right should be defined, limited, and restrained \ 
and accordingly, I propose that no State shall secede without the consent of the 
Legislatures of all the States of the section to which the State proposing to seeide 
may belong. This is obviously a most reasoi able n straint; and yt t. of its sufficiency 
no man can doubt, when he remembers that, in the present crisis of the country, I 
this provision existed, no Stale could have obtained the absolute consent, at least, 
of even one-half of the States of the South. 

Such, Mr. Speaker, is the plan which, with preat deference, and yet with great 
confidence, too, in its efficiency, I would propose for the adjustment of our contro- 
versies, and for the restoration and preservation of the Union which our Guheta 
made. Like all human contri\ances, certainly, it is imperfect, and subject to objec- 
tion. Hut something starching, radical, extreme, going to the very foundations of 
government, and reaching the seat of the malady, must be done, and that right 
apeedily, while the fracture is yet fresh and reunion is possible. Two months, ago, 
when I last addressed the House, imploring you for immediate action, less, much 
less, would have sufficed ; but we learned no wisdom from the 1< lie past ; 

and now, indeed, not poppy, nor mandragora, r.or other drowsy sirup is of any value 
to arrest that revolution, in the midst of which we are 'o-day — a revolution the 
grandest and the saddest of modern times. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 026 465 5 



APPENDIX. 



-4 ■» ♦ •-»- 



( 



The following are the amendments to the Constitution proposed by Mr. Vallan'- 
digham: 

joint uesolution. 

Whereas the Constitution of the United States is a grant of specific powers dHega'ed to the Federal 
Government by the people of the several States, all powers notdelegated to it nor prohibited to the States being 
reserved o the States, respectively, or to the people ; and whereas it is the tendency of stronger Govern- 
ments to enlarge their powers and jurisdiction at the expense of weaker Governments, and of majorities to 
usurp and abuse power and oppress minorities, to arrest and hold in check which tendency compacts and 
constitutions are made ; and whereas the only effectual constitutional security for the rights of minorittes, 
whether as people or as States, is the power expressly reserved in constitutions of protecting those rights 
by their own action; and whereas this mode of protection by checks and guarantees is recognized in the 
Federal Constitution, as well in the case of the equility of the States in representation and m suffrage in 
the Senate, as in the provision for overruling the veto of the President and for amending the Constitution, 
not to enumerate other examples; and whereas, unhappily, because of the vast extent and diversified in- 
terests and institutions of the several States of the Union, sectional divisions can no longer be suppressed ; 
and whereas it concern? the peace ani stability of the Federal Union and Government that a division of 
the States into mere slavernlding aid non- c laveholding sections, causing hitherto, and from the nature and 
necessity of the case, inflammatory and disastrous controversies upon the subject of slavery, ending al- 
ready in present disruption of the Union, should be forever hereafter ignored ; and whereas this important 
end is best to be obtained by the recognition of other sections without regard to slavery, neither of which 
sections shall alone be strong enough to oppress or control the others, and each be vested with the power 
to protect iiself from aggressions : Therefore, 

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
(two-thirds of both Homes concurring,) That the following articles be, and are he eby, proposed as amend- 
ments to the Constitution of the United States, which shill be valid to all inter ts and purposes as part of 
said Constitution when ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the ssveral States : 

Article XIII. 

Sec. 1. The United States are divided into four sections, as follows: 

The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and all new States annexed and admitted into the Union, or formed qr 
erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by the junction of two or more of the same, or of 
parts thereof, or out of territory acquired nor h of said States, shall constiute one section, to be known as 
the North. idsng <— *• - s - ;; . I 

The States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas, and all new 
States annexed or admitted into the Union, or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by 
the junction of two or more of the sam;, or of parts thereof, or out of territory now held or hereafter ac- 
quired^torth of latitude 36° 3C, and east of the crast of the Rocky Mountains, shall constitute another sec- 
tion, to be known as the West. 

The States of Oregon and California, and all new States annexed and admitted into the Union, or formed 
or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by the junction of two or more of the same, oi 
of parts thereof, or out of territory now held or hereafter acquired west of the crest of the Rocky Moun- 
tains and of the Rio Grande, shall constitute another section, to be known as the Pacific. 

The Sta'esof Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ala- 
bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, and all new Stales 
annexed and admitted into the Union, rr formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or 
by the junction of two or more of the same, or of parts thereof, or out of territoiy acquired east of the Rio 
Grande and south of latitude 36° 3C, shall constitute another section, to be known as the South. 

Sec. 2. On demand of one-third of tie Senators of any one ol the sections on any bill, order, resolution, 
or vot», to which the concurrence of the House of Representatives may be necessary, except on a ques- 
tion of adjournment, a vote shall be had by sections, and a majority of the Senators from each section vot- 
ing s-hall be necessary to the passage of such bill, order, or resolution, and to the validity of every such 
vote. 

Sec. 3. Two of the electors for President and Vice-President shall be appointed by each State in such 
manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, for the State at large. The ether electors to which each State 
may be entitled, snail be chosen in the respective congressional districts into which the State may, at the 
•••Tular decennial period, have been divided, by the electors of each district, having the qualifications re- 
i site for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. A majority of all the electors 
in each of the four sections in this article established, shall be necessary to t'te choice of President and 
Vice-President; and the concurrence of a majority of the States of each section shall be necessary to the 
choice of President by the House of Representatives, and of the Senators from each section to the choice 
of Vice-President by the Senate, whenever the right of choiie shall devolve upon them respectively. 

Sec. 4. The President and Vice President shall hold their office each during the te m of six years; and 
neither shall be e igible to more than one term, except by the volts of two- thirds of all the electors of each 
aeclian, or of the Slates ot each section, whenever the right of choice o( President shall devolve upon the 
House of Representatives, or of Senators from each section whenever the right of choice of Vice-Presi- 
dent shall devolve upon the Senate. 



